This week I started in on some pencil roughs intended for the future graphic novel. Everything is guesswork on my part, completely experiential, as it’s the first time I’ve embarked upon this genre. Over the months I have picked up and examined many graphic novels, by women, mostly. This has been such an interesting exercise, as they are so different from each other and all brilliant.

One: Fun Home by Alison Betchel, is a great book, full of black and white images, with speech bubbles and spaces crowded with words. The drawings are great and full of character and very well drawn. Hmm, I consider. Do I want my book to look like this? For although I like the artwork, it’s not really my style.

But as I’ve never actually made a comic-style book before, I really don’t have a style. I can draw realistically but I don’t think that I want that for this. I pick up another book.

The next book I examine is Everything is Flammable by Gabrielle Bell. Here most pages are set out in regular-sized squares, mostly in colour. Again there are a great deal of words in the speech bubbles, and I found it a little tricky to easily read it all. With many graphic novels the lettering is hand drawn. Not that that bothers me, but I don’t think I wish to have so many words on my pages.

Then I buy one of New Zealand writer Sarah Laing’s graphic novels, called Mansfield and Me, which makes a clever comparison between her life and that of Katherine Mansfield’s. Her style is loose, in watercolour, with outlined figures. The characterisation is compelling. And Laing cleverly depicts what’s past in black and white and present day in colour. ( I had trouble adding a colour page, sorry).

I like the looser style, but I am still deciding just what would suit me and the story I wish to tell. I have decided on one thing however, and that is to have more illustration than writing on a page. Writing novels will do that to you.

And then, I was given a delightful graphic novel Juliette, by French woman Camille Jourdy, who uses watercolour extensively, producing beautiful full page scenes and rendering her figures with a light yet defined touch. She mixes and matches the shapes within a page with some images stretching across the page. But she draws just so many people! And I cant see myself with enough years remaining to complete such a comprehensive scale of work, for all that I love what she does.

So, the simple sketch you see as my header, is the start of my venture into yet another genre of art and writing. I have sketched out a few other pages too, in case you were wondering.

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Fun Home by Alison Bechdel: First published in Great Britain by Jonathon Cape, 2006. First published by Vintage in 2022.

Everything is Flammable by Gabrielle Bell: Published by Uncivilised Books, Minneapolis, USA, 2017.

Mansfield and Me by Sarah Laing: Published by Victoria University Press, Wellington 2016, UK edition published by Lightning Books, Shropshire.

Juliette by Camille Jourdy: Published by Drawn and Quarterly, no date given.

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